Katie Davies, Martin Arostegui – The Sun April 5, 2026
IRAN likely used lethal Russian shoulder-fired missiles to shoot down a US fighter jet, intelligence sources told The Sun.
The regime quietly made a £450m deal with Moscow to buy 500 Verba launchers with 2,500 9M336 missiles as Donald Trump built an armada in the region.
At least some were delivered in January, it is understood.
Intelligence analysts, who asked to remain anonymous, claimed a £60m US F-15 Eagle jet downed on Friday was hit by 9K333 Verba Man Portable air defence systems (MANPADs) obtained from Russia in a planned ambush.
The deadly missiles are effective against aircraft, helicopters and unmanned aerial vehicles flying at low altitudes.
They have an altitude range of around 5km, guided by a three-channel infrared seeker designed to improve resistance and reduce vulnerability to heat decoys and other countermeasures of conventional fighter aircraft.
Click to enlarge
In propaganda videos intended to scare the West, the IRGC claimed to have shot down the F-15 Eagle and an A-10 Warthog with a “new domestically produced air defence system”.
Iran’s long-range S-300 air defences that could threaten the strategic bombers obliterating underground command bunkers, missile factories and nuclear sites, were taken out by US Tomahawk missiles, F-35 and F-22 Stealth fighters in the opening days of the war.
US Secretary of War Pete Hegseth claimed that “total air dominance” had been achieved in a Pentagon briefing last week.
But recently acquired shorter-range MANPADs can threaten fighter aircraft increasingly conducting low-altitude strikes against mobile missile launchers, troop convoys, and other “targets of opportunity”.
It comes as Trump today confirmed the second US service member from the downed fighter had been rescued in a remote mountain region.
The two-man plane – normally based at RAF Lakenheath, Suffolk – was hit on Friday during a sortie over Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad province in southern Iran.
Elite units quickly rescued the pilot – but they faced a race against the clock to save the second crew member, a colonel.
Both had ejected into enemy territory before the plane hit the ground and exploded.
If only we in Europe could get hold of these to down chem-trail spewing planes…
I watch the destruction in Israel from Iran’s missiles but so far Israel has not been able to show one unexploded bomblet. These are not cluster bombs, they are multi-warhead munitions which so far all seem to have exploded on contact. They do not lie around dormant waiting to kill a child later on but that’s what the losing side US and Israel (who could draw in no allies this time) are eager to equate them to, which just goes to show how much they know what they use is wrong.
The Sun?
Are you serious?
The British are seriously sick with Russophobia
No doubt , many of those elite guys, after the rescue operation was done, returned to the gym to lift weights or something. But what about that Colonel, left behind? Said Pete at the pentagon briefing : “ no worries, there are a lot of colonels in the army. Go Army! “.
Tony I neil@
the london black gang The London posse assigned their people to wait near US bases in the UK and shine laser pens at the pilots before they could do the chemtrailing , the pilots then had to land and for some time they had to stop